I’ve called Jo to say I’m happy with their response.I’ll also delete this email after I’ve sent it.
We’ve had a request for all our internal UEA emails that have any bearing on the subject, so apologies for brevity.
See you in November!
Cheers
Phil”

“Professor John Mitchell, the Met Office’s Director of Climate Science, shared responsibility for the most worrying headline in the 2007 Nobel Prize-winning IPCC report – that the Earth is now hotter than at any time in the past 1,300 years.

And he approved the inclusion in the report of the famous ‘hockey stick’ graph, showing centuries of level or declining temperatures until a steep 20th Century rise.”

“Some of the FOI requests made to them came from the same person who has made requests to the Met Office.

He is David Holland, an electrical engineer familiar with advanced statistics who has written several papers questioning orthodox thinking on global warming.

The Met Office’s first response to Mr Holland was a claim that Prof Mitchell’s records had been ‘deleted’ from its computers.

Later, officials admitted they did exist after all, but could not be disclosed because they were ‘personal’, and had nothing to do with the professor’s Met Office job.

98 thoughts on “Why all the cloak and dagger stuff if this is all settled science…?”

It would be interesting to try a FOI request on research not related to AGW. I willing to bet that all the “Cloak And Dagger” issues only happens when the work isn’t properly performed and questionable.

Because there is a lot of money and people’s personal celebrity status at stake. Tyndall Centre’s success is directly related to what those engaged in “The Cause” present. If CRU were to say “we were all wrong, CO2 has some but possibly a negligible impact on temperature changes we are seeing” then thousands of bureaucrats lose their jobs and thousands in academic “centers” do as well in addition to losing billions of dollars of government funds that pour into those various “centers” in countries around the world. Climatology loses its luster, they are no longer celebrities, no more trips to Tahiti for “vital” conferences and no more TV interviews. It goes back to the academic drudge work you might find in the geology department.

I used to work for a local government authority not too far away from East Anglia and attended a seminar on implementation of the Data Protection and FOI Acts. The Local Authority’s lawyers conducted the seminar and it was plain from their approach that the standard attitude towards FOI requests – regardless of subject – was anything but cop-operative. This wasn’t just bravado talking at the seminar, it was consistently implicit in all of the responses to questions about dealing with requests for information. Basically there was an unofficial policy of sandbagging . . . . It was easy to get the impression that this wasn’t just the local approach. I suspect that many public authorities and bodies have a “this is our information and we’re keeping it” ethos, and this attitude might very well be at work in the CRU and similar places elsewhere in the UK – except where Chief Officers have a more principled approach or the law has been brought to bear effectively . . . though in such places there might still be unofficial deletion policies . . . . Human’s have many motivations for secrecy . . sometimes it’s all about control, or creating the impression of privilege etc . .

Met office receives an FOI request. As a public body it has the obligation to respond. It runs its response past someone who is not part of the MET office? That person then states that he is deleting his reply approving the MET’s response, apparently because his own organisation has had an FOI request for emails held by his organisation in respect of the same subject matter.

So is it accurate to suggest that Jones deletes as a means (in his mind) of:

a) concealing the fact that he has commented on the response to the FOI request received by the MET, an organisation to which he has no connecion in the context of its own dealings with FOI: and
b) to conceal within his own organisation that he ever had such email contact with the MET?

Start with the fact that people treat their company emails as private and confidential (even though they are not) and add to it the fact that some climate scientists are engaged in what is effectively political science. That pretty much explains it.

The flat temp plateau since 2001 makes them nervous and feel to have to resort to cloak and dagger style……. especially, (not to forget), the millenium achievement, the TAR and SRES reports of 2001, in which the “cream” of 40 institutes participated, predicted steep temp increases and not one single institute predicted flat rates to come….
their credibility is at stake…….therefore gatekeeping, collusion, info suppression and sharpening of knifes…..

Part of the problem is one of culture. The British have a very deep seated culture of official secrecy. While they did pass a FOIA, that they treat it the way that they do is pretty understandable given their bureaucratic culture.

I would guess that much of this behind the scenes, inside baseball talk has now migrated to very unofficial correspondence using personal email accounts and private mailing lists and other fora. (such as in the US we had “Journolist” where various journalists coordinated their support for one political party, which was actually a predecessor of one called Townhouse which was also exposed).

It has already reached the ‘tipping point’. When someone in power, with the required courage, gives it a nudge, down it comes. Maybe the nudge is behind the AES-256 password, or maybe that will be revealed after the nudge happens. And these phonies will then be consigned to the dustbin of history…to atone for the wasteful sham that they maintained.

It’s easy to understand how Professor Jones would be reticent to respond to FOI requests. He’s a scientist, not a PR person. His work is available on line and and in Journals. Many of the requests are repetitive and unnecessary. The world needs Dr Jones and his colleagues doing what they do best ie conducting research in an effort to clarify the world’s emerging climate crisis.

Hugh Pepper, when scientists take government money to perform research, they are legally obligated to respond to FOI requests. Their work is paid for by the tax payers, and therefore have a legal (and moral) obligation to make their work available to the public. They know this before they accept the funds. If they don’t want to deal with FOI requests and all that, then they shouldn’t accept government grants. Accepting government grants and then failing to respond to FOI requests isn’t just wrong, it’s illegal.

It’s easy to understand how Professor Jones would be reticent to respond to FOI requests. He’s a scientist, not a PR person. His work is available on line and and in Journals. Many of the requests are repetitive and unnecessary. The world needs Dr Jones and his colleagues doing what they do best ie conducting research in an effort to clarify the world’s emerging climate crisis.
________________________________
OH Bull

The world need the scientific method brought back into “Vogue” instead of this kindergarten post-normal scientology type crap.

Scientist are human and they lie and cheat and make mistakes just like the next person. Open publication of the methods and the data so the results can be validated by another is part of the scientific method for that exact reason.

If it is hidden and can not be replicated it ain’t science. Pseudo-science to prop up propaganda is what these buffoons are doing not science.

You DO NOT toss your data if it is important enough to write a peer reviewed paper about. It should be archived in one form or another so the data is available to other scientists.

The fact that these guys tossed the data, data that is SO IMPORTANT that the results demand that we as an entire species are supposed to completely change our economies and life styles, is just a wee bit more than I can swallow.

JUST the fact the data got dumped is enough to tell me this stinks. It reminds me of the dog ate my homework excuse of a little boy.

I used to work for a local government authority not too far away from East Anglia and attended a seminar on implementation of the Data Protection and FOI Acts. The Local Authority’s lawyers conducted the seminar and it was plain from their approach that the standard attitude towards FOI requests – regardless of subject – was anything but cop-operative…..
_________________________________

I am not at all surprised.

Why did citizens want FOI Acts in the first place???

Because of the waste, bureaucratic bumbling, graft, kickbacks, back scratching, lying, cheating…. and all the other reasons why we have protection for whistle blowers too.

Here is a really great example of the type of stuff that goes on when bureaucrats can hide in the dark.

People became ill and died but it was all swept under the rug and even to this day, despite a Congressional Investigation, no one has been brought to account. That is the type of thing that is being hidden and that is why bureaucrats will do everything they can to avoid FOI Acts.

It’s easy to understand how Professor Jones would be reticent to respond to FOI requests. He’s a scientist, not a PR person. His work is available on line and and in Journals. Many of the requests are repetitive and unnecessary. The world needs Dr Jones and his colleagues doing what they do best ie conducting research in an effort to clarify the world’s emerging climate crisis.’

Yeah, that explains it all. Dream on and go back under your bridge. ‘Doing what they do best’ … fooling the gullible.

Can you imagine today any “cloak and dagger stuff” in relation to the theory of relativity? “I’ll delete my emails relating to mass, I will inform others to do likewise.”

The science is definitely not settled. We were told to expect to see more of the human fingerprint of warming as the decades proceed; now we are told to wait and see for the next 30 years, all in the face of flat temps for over a decade.

And if there is anyone who I feel kind of sorry for in all of this, it is Keith Briffa. He seems to reluctantly go along in order to get along but has serious doubts about the quality of the data that is being used as such a key part of everything.

…..A lack of respect accompanied by a feeling of intense dislike for the people that request data (i.e. sceptics who too often allege “fakery” and “fraud”). That is why, when the same data is requested by a respected university, they have no problem supplying the information.

Climate scientists hate you. Simple as that.
_____________
No it is not that simple.

The scientist at the “respected universities” are all part of the you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” clique. The sceptics, some from well known Universities, are not only hated but FEARED

You can see in the e-mails that the CAGW group was not happy with Mann’s “Hockey stick” but NONE of them were willing to stand by McIntyre and McKitrick. Also remember Ross McKitrick worked in the Department of Economics, University of Guelph.

The problem is systemic and global. Organizations have learned to game the system to their own advantage. They really do believe the ordinary citizen has a duty to unquestioningly step up and pay the bills and not complain:

crosspatch says: “…If CRU were to say “we were all wrong, CO2 has some but possibly a negligible impact on temperature changes we are seeing” then thousands of bureaucrats lose their jobs and thousands in academic “centers” do as well in addition to losing billions of dollars of government funds that pour into those various “centers” in countries around the world…”

They remind me of a bitch killing her whelp to protect it from another dog, better to destroy the data than to let i fall into the hands of the unanointed. Now the next step the cabalistic machinations to cover their tracks. They have obviously left the domain of science and entered the domain of clericalism; and they call us deniers!

crosspatch says: November 26, 2011 at 11:28 am […] If CRU were to say “we were all wrong, CO2 has some but possibly a negligible impact on temperature changes we are seeing” then thousands of bureaucrats lose their jobs and thousands in academic “centers” do as well in addition to losing billions of dollars of government funds that pour into those various “centers” in countries around the world.

It is likely, at the current point, that even if Phil and the entire CRU and even Mike said that, politicos would rather replace them than say the last decade’s policies and huge investments pushed by the CAGW idea were based on an error — oops, we’re sorry. As someone said (reference will not be given) from a certain stage on scientists are no longer needed. Everybody but the taxpayer sems to have an ongoing interest in this.

Answer: A lack of respect accompanied by a feeling of intense dislike for the people that request data (i.e. sceptics who too often allege “fakery” and “fraud”). That is why, when the same data is requested by a respected university, they have no problem supplying the information.

Climate scientists hate you. Simple as that.”

Duh! Surely the main reason FOI laws were designed (and needed) was for precisely the cases where information that should be in the public domain was being withheld from a “hated” party!

As someone said (reference will not be given) from a certain stage on scientists are no longer needed. Everybody but the taxpayer sems to have an ongoing interest in this.

Well, sort of. The “scientists” in this case are priming the pump. It is apparently Hulme who saw all this coming and configured UEA to take best advantage of it (e.g. founded Tyndall Centre). At some point this crop of scientists will no longer be “needed” but will retire in high status as “founders” of an entire new cash stream employing lots of people whose entire product is inefficiency in the name of “environmentalism” and “saving” the Earth.

But when that time comes, nobody inside will be able to raise their voice because they will be squashed. If they appear skeptical in school, they will be given bad grades, they will see their theses shot down, they will not be published, they will be silenced. If they change their stripes after becoming successful, they will be portrayed as having gone “Whacko”, they will be called names and ridiculed. The culture in climate science will become much as it is now with political science and journalism departments at many schools … only the “correct” point of view will be tolerated and all other points will be weeded out and/or suppressed.

Your comments are really beyond parody. Are you sure you’re not a secret skeptic trying to make
honest warmists look bad?
====================================================================
Is it possible that someone invented a “parody post producer” and that’s the most wicked one they could generate??

Here is my essential issue with the Warmistas. Let’s grant the Warmistas all their assumptions, global warming is real, it’s here, and it’s going to have massive economic consequences, millions will be killed, wars will break out, etc.

Then why not develop Nuclear energy? There’s so much Uranium, we make bullets out of U-238, which can be converted through an admittedly slow process into Plutonium like the French do. And we could also invest in developing Thorium based nuclear power plants, and export the energy technology to the world. Instead, the US hasn’t built a nuclear power plant in the US in decades.

Somehow, though, the most obvious non-c02 producing energy producer is off limits. The arguments that apply to green energy are not allowed for nuclear, such as “productizing it will make it better and cheaper,” but is off limits to the Warmistas. Their solution is to make expensive energy, alla Solyndria, and other worthless wasteful Green projects that seem to reward their friends and large corporations.

It makes little sense to me, the complex mind of the Warmista. I think I’m missing something essential in the equation.

Thank you for all your work trying to uphold what I was taught was the essence of science; theory, experiment, observation, followed by revision of theory as necessary in the light of those observations. Since most commenters here are from North America, it might be useful to be reminded that ‘ First Amendment Rights’ are something of which we Brits can only dream.

The fact that our current head of the Royal Society (which I fondly think of as the fons et origo of modern science) is a Warmist makes me despair.

If there is a “puppet master” in all of this, it appears to be Hulme.
———————–

Perhaps, but the message from so many of the mails is that the egomaniacal, bullying, manipulating Grand Vizier in all of this is Mann, urging the team on to ever more dubious levels of nefarious activities. If Jones and his CRU had made public their doubts about Mann and his work the history of the last decade in terns of climate science would have surely been very different.

To misquote Hamlet:
“What a piece of work is Mann, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god!”

Because it isn’t REALLY about CO2 and it isn’t REALLY about “global warming”. It is about making people AFRAID of CO2 and “global warming” so that they can implement their other strategies. Nuclear power plays poorly to their political base (ever seen a Green Party member of any consequence that was in favor of nuclear power?).

If this REALLY was about CO2, sure, they would be bending over themselves to actually cut CO2 production but they aren’t. What they are about is MOVING the CO2 production from Europe and the US to China, India, and Brazil (chiefly, among other places). All of the rules and regulations won’t change CO2 production one iota on a global scale but it will change it locally in the target countries. What this is about is making energy production much more expensive in developed countries, hamstring their economic development, force production to less developed nations and do so under the direction of unelected bureaucrats (various UN agencies, “centers” such as Tyndall, even CARB in California etc) who can’t be thrown into office by the voters and were not put into office by voters.

If we faced such a drastic danger from CO2, they would be beside themselves in demanding that we switch our power production to nuclear NOW, but they aren’t. It is about creating a centrally managed global economy and using the fear of CO2 as the mechanism for getting people to accept it. Nuclear would require no new bureaucracies, no centers, no lifestyle changes, no “radical” activism. It would pretty much mean life as usual with much cheaper electricity without major changes.

Mike,
I think many people at IAMAS will be a long way from the conference centre.
I’d just go along to the session and enjoy Umbria the rest of the time. You
might find wireless there, so maybe add an extra hour or two to get some
decent connection time.

For the UK FOIA, anybody can make a request. The UK Act isn’t limited to
UK citizens. It seems this isn’t generally realized even within the UK. This was
the first thing I tried in order not to comply back in Feb. Our Act also applies to
all data – regardless of where it comes from, so is not restricted to UK data. The
Canadian Act is also this wideranging.

So if I’d written a paper about some Martian data, then a person from Venus could
ask me for it !!!! The Act in the UK clearly wasn’t designed that well!
Ciao
Phil

What we have here is a case of two very powerful “useful idiots” (Mann and Jones) who seem (to me) to rate pretty high on the narcissism scale. Their narcissism is being stroked. They love it. They are now famous. Briffa, on the other hand, doesn’t appear to be nearly so narcissistic and seems troubled that the science really isn’t all that settled.

Mann and Jones (among others) are being used but they are being stroked and they like it, actually, they THRIVE on it. As long as they find a source of that narcissistic energy, they will feed on it.

Phil Jones says “I’ll also delete this email after I’ve sent it.”
Surely, Jones could not have forgotten to press the delete button once the email had been sent. I understand that he has problems with Excel but surely he knows how to use email and the delete button on the keyboard!
Did Jones delete the email?
If so, why is it amongst the emails that have been released?
What does this say about the source of these emails, by which I mean the server on which they were stored?

crosspatch says: November 26, 2011 at 2:15 pm […] Well, sort of. The “scientists” in this case are priming the pump.

Certainly, but my thought is much more evil. After many regulations and taxes and structures etc are put in place, most won’t be taken back even after it is found they are founded on an error. It is said that for third world help many countries still demand of the helped country not to use DDT. It’s something that is already in place and the situation change isn’t even talked about. If it is shown that CO2 has little to do with GW, will Australia remove the carbon tax, will the carbon stock exchanges close, will turbines stop being subsidized, etc. Anyway, I think you saw what I meant.

They have admitted criminal activity, albeit too late for any action to be taken about those breaches. Surely at the very least now, they should have all future grants stopped to prevent further criminal activity?

If it is shown that CO2 has little to do with GW, will Australia remove the carbon tax, will the carbon stock exchanges close, will turbines stop being subsidized, etc. Anyway, I think you saw what I meant.

I believe Australia will remove the carbon taxes after the next national election.

I believe most/all of the carbon exchanges will close.

I believe turbine subsidies will end and sooner rather than later.

But more importantly, CARB (California Air Resources Board) will still remain in place. The US EPA will still keep most of their regulations on the books. The various state agencies will still keep those regulations alive.

I have a proposal:

No regulation from ANY agency can go into effect without simple majority approval from a committee (joint committee where a bicameral legislative body is involved) of the people’s representatives consisting of equal membership of the two political parties holding the most and second most number of seats in those chambers of government. So in the US, any regulation by EPA would have to be approved by a joint environmental committee consisting of an equal number of Republicans and Democrats and a tie means the regulation does not go into effect. In California, it would mean that a regulation by CARB would not go into effect until approved by a joint assembly committee consisting of an equal number of members of both the Republican and Democrat parties.

If something is really a clear and present danger, both parties will likely vote for it. If someone is simply handing cash to political supporters, probably not.

Somewhere along the line a representative of the people needs to be involved in approving these regulations.

crosspatch says: November 26, 2011 at 2:37 pm: Then why not develop Nuclear energy?DING! DING! DING! Because it isn’t REALLY about CO2 and it isn’t REALLY about “global warming”.

Right! They wont even accept hydro power on the basis of biodiversity (which gets along nicely without their help). It’s about removing access to cheap power. Even oil companies are now power companies — as oil wont last forever they must diversify. And if they sell oil drop by drop, they’ll get much more profit as it can only go up (and when arabs see the end of their oil, they’ll eat sand). And if in the meantime they have a wind and solar branch, they get the subsidies too.

The tens of thousands of people who die every winter for lack of the possibility to heat themselves (excess winter mortality) are none of the greens or the power companies concern, that’s a public health problem. But a heat wave killing 3000 is dangerous global warming.

It really boils down to the fact that to these people there is a higher TRUTH, than actual facts. Therefore information that would bring those TRUTHs into question must be suppressed so it does not fall into the hands of heretics.

A long time ago I presented a keynote at a conference in London where I called into question the received wisdom on air pollution, arguing that it was actually improving. In my naivite I hadn’t realised that the conference had been organised in order to present a case for further funding and damn the facts! I ate lunch alone that day. I wonder if you guys actually realise that there actually is most likely a loose conspiracy here and these people are fighting hard to hold onto their funding. Academics can begin to believe their own rhetoric after a while because they live in a closeted environment where all they hear are voices that agree with them.

“Part of the problem is one of culture. The British have a very deep seated culture of official secrecy. While they did pass a FOIA, that they treat it the way that they do is pretty understandable given their bureaucratic culture.”

We do also have the Data Protection Act which is taken very seriously. Amongst other things one of the main requirements is for all companies to provide all the personal data that it holds on a person making the request in a reasonable time and at reasonable cost. Failure to comply is serious and all companies I have worked for recently put in quite a bit of work to be able to answer these requests fairly easily.

Did Jones delete the email?
If so, why is it amongst the emails that have been released?
<<

These emails look like a (modified) download from a mail server. All emails are logged on these servers. They also log mail that is passing through. If you get a kick-back email due to some failure, you’ll see all the various mail servers adding their time stamps on the message. Deleting an email on your account does nothing to the mail server. The only way you can do that is if your IT person deletes that mail server’s data. That usually violates company/owner policies and may actually break some laws. Because of the logging by intermediate mail servers, you can’t really delete an email on one server. You have to modify all the intermediate mail server logs too. I doubt any IT person would/could perform such a task.

Phil Jones says “I’ll also delete this email after I’ve sent it.”
Surely, Jones could not have forgotten to press the delete button once the email had been sent. I understand that he has problems with Excel but surely he knows how to use email and the delete button on the keyboard!
Did Jones delete the email?
If so, why is it amongst the emails that have been released?
What does this say about the source of these emails, by which I mean the server on which they were stored?
—————
Phil may have deleted the file from his own computer, but it remained backed up on the CRU’s central server. He did not understand the limitations of the action of deleting files: all he was doing was reducing the clutter in his own personal e-mail archives. Even when files are deleted on the hard drives of personal computers, they may be retrieved if the hard-drive is not wiped clean or the file has been repeatedly overwritten. His action of deleting his own copy of the files did nothing to prevent their later retrieval, so the quality or veracity of the source is not compromised.

vigilantfish is right. And even “deleting” an email doesn’t really erase it, it just puts an “invisible” command at the beginning of the file. A lot of information can be recovered even after erasing it. I have a CD called “Data Rescue3” that I’ve used to find files I deleted a long time ago.

Phil Jones may believe he’s safe. But then, he doesn’t even know the basic programming and statistics that every scientist and engineer should know. If an organization makes the decision to hire an investigator to do a forensic search, it will find at least 99% of its emails. They are all somewhere or other.

I agree with one of crosspatch’s earlier comments. I think, straightforwardly that we are dealing with malignant narcissists, at least with some of the ‘top’ members of the Team and with a number of other prominent agw fanatics (we all know who they are and which blogs they run to promote themselves and bolster their messianic delusions),
‘Malignant narcissism has been described as “an extreme form of antisocial personality disorder that is manifest in a person who is pathologically grandiose, lacking in conscience and behavioral regulation, and with characteristic demonstrations of joyful cruelty and sadism”.
Malignant narcissism is a theoretical or ‘experimental’ diagnostic category; although narcissistic personality disorder is found in the current version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR), malignant narcissism is not. Individuals with malignant narcissism would be diagnosed under narcissistic personality disorder. Malignant narcissism can be partially treated with medications and therapy, helping to reduce aggravating symptoms. As a syndrome, it may include aspects of schizoid and narcissistic personality disorder, as well as paranoia — recent [when?] “contributions have confirmed the importance of malignant narcissism and the defense of projection” in the latter syndrome, as well as “the patient’s vulnerability to malignant narcissistic regression”‘http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malignant_narcissism

Projection we all know well enough if we’ve ever been to an alarmist blog where they accuse us of the very things they themselves are/do (Big Oil BS etc. is the most obvious but there are lots of other examples). Paranoia is everywhere (and reading these emails shows that VERY clearly).

These personality disordered types are natural bullies, necessarily so, since their fragile personalities cannot survive unless they dominate; are entirely unable to accept either criticism or the catastrophic fact that they may be wrong. (Our political classes are also packed with sociopaths of this type. ) They CANNOT be wrong, even if everything round them proves to others that they are. They are frightening and intensely combative dominant personalities and will in effect terrorise those who feel compelled to follow them. More passive characters will submit, as happens in many workplaces – and clearly so in Crimatology and its first team.

It’s easy to understand how Professor Jones would be reticent to respond to FOI requests. He’s a scientist, not a PR person. His work is available on line and and in Journals. Many of the requests are repetitive and unnecessary. The world needs Dr Jones and his colleagues doing what they do best ie conducting research in an effort to clarify the world’s emerging climate crisis.

But the FOI request referenced wasn’t about Jones’ work. It was about John Mitchell efforts, as Chief Climate Scientist at the Met Office, to include the Hockey Stick graph in the 2007 IPCC report. If you are concerned about Phil Jones’ having enough time to focus on “conducting research”, perhaps you can recommend that he avoid spending his time conspiring with John Mitchell to help the Department of Environment. Food and Rural Affairs’ (Defra) efforts to stonewall David Holland’s FOI requests.

The fact is that Jones wouldn’t plan to delete his emails if he didn’t have something to hide…

Money slated for health law gets detoured
Lawmakers tap fund three times within a year
…
In cash-strapped Washington, President Obama’s $1 trillion health care law is presenting a tempting target for lawmakers seeking funds for other projects, as Congress last week raided the health care piggy bank for the third time in less than a year.
…
All told, Congress and the president have tapped some $50 billion earmarked to pay for benefits and programs in the health care overhaul in future years to fund more-immediate spending needs.

Both earlier efforts dealt with health care issues, but the bill Mr. Obama signed Monday marks the first time that the massive 2010 law has been tapped to fund something completely unrelated.
…

It doesn’t matter what the money was stated for, what “noble cause” that we were promised the money would be solely dedicated to. Once government gets a new funding source, it becomes part of the giant slush fund. How many “more-immediate spending needs” would there be if the federal government wasn’t throwing money at the “special projects” of influential legislators, or the administration backing even more Solyndras which, quite mysteriously, benefits big campaign donors? And once it comes time to pay the bills for the US experiment in socialized medicine, from the money that should have been saved up, it will be declared a new crisis demanding new “revenue enhancements.”

If you already have a carbon tax, best of luck getting rid of it, no matter how much fraud and deceit gets revealed in the underlying basis as well as in the implementation. If you don’t have one now, make sure you never get one, because your own government will fight you tooth and nail to keep it.

…
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Friday that three Volt battery packs were crash-tested last week. In one instance, the battery caught fire afterward, and in another the battery emitted smoke and sparks.

Last May, a fire erupted in the battery of a Chevy Volt that had been damaged during a government crash test three weeks earlier. Last week’s tests were an attempt to replicate the May fire.
…

Three battery packs crash-tested, one caught fire, one threw sparks which would be wonderful around the gasoline vapors that may be present after an accident as the Volt also can use gasoline. Oh well, as Meat Loaf put it, two out of three ain’t bad. Isn’t it wonderful that the ‘Bama bailed out the unions in a bankruptcy structured to screw over everyone but the unions, so that Government Motors could bring “alternate energy” vehicles, specifically the Volt, to the market for the great benefit of consumers?

And if you are in a position to “stack the deck” with a gaggle of narcissists and then “stroke” them, you can be in a very powerful position, indeed. There must be a bazillion other universities around the globe studying climate. Why do Mann and Jones “get all the work”? Why are they in a position of being “gatekeepers” for that entire field of science? How did they get there? Now you look at people such as Roy Spencer if UAH and Curry and Ga. Tech. and wonder why they aren’t they in positions of greater influence?

Someone else mentioned it in passing at Climate Audit, I think. It is as if there is not only a push to publish certain papers, there seems also to be a “pull”. There seems to be a “market” for papers with the “right” conclusions. These get rushed to the head of the line and published in short order with only cursory review by friends. Anyone challenging that line of thought is blocked to the extent possible.

Projection also works in a different sort of way. You can tell what a person finds personal most insulting to them by the insults they throw at others. Jones has a pretty obvious pattern when dealing with people who question things. He first tells them that they quite obviously don’t understand the question they are asking and “explains” that the answer is right there but implies they are too dumb to see it. Then, if he must, he tosses out something obscure for them to chase down which also doesn’t really answer their question but he is hoping that either they can’t understand what he has referenced (which sometimes has very little to do with the question they asked) and give up, or that they begin to believe Jones when he says they must be too stupid to understand. It causes people to begin to doubt themselves and give up. Then he plays “too busy” and can’t be bothered with someone so insignificant because he is busy playing world savior. And if his feet are finally held to the fire long enough he will send you on a wild goose chase for incomplete data or data in non-existent locations or the wrong data. Hopefully by then the question you were after is now irrelevant and you will be off onto other subjects but if you are persistent, he will just feed it to his dog and be done with the matter. It simply doesn’t exist anymore, but it certainly did when he wrote his paper! So he can’t be proved wrong now.

Mann, Hansen, Jones, Bradley, etc. are in a very interesting position and I don’t believe they got there by accident. They were selected by someone to be where they are. Who decided to give so much weight to these people? I believe it was Hulme. And interestingly, Hulme as already put down the groundwork for walking back on the issue. He has already created an escape avenue by saying that the consensus was phony, that the IPCC has probably “run its course” and that the Himalayan glacier thing was all a bunch of baloney. He is setting himself up to survive the explosion of “climate science” as we know it today without getting any it on himself. The man seems to be brilliant. He sets things up to greatly profit from things, yet leaves himself an escape route in case it all comes crashing down.

So which came first, the chicken or the egg? Was it the AGW “scientists” banging their drums, or was it a bunch of “progressives” realizing they could leverage AGW deciding to cultivate the most narcissistic of the bunch knowing they would do whatever it takes to gain prominence (and keep it once they got it)? So you make some little Princes and rely on their desire to maintain their positions to do most of the dirty work for you.

There are a lot of people in the climate field. Obviously they don’t all share in private the lock-step image that is shown in public. I personally would trust Curry and Spencer more as gatekeepers than Mann and Jones.

Hugh Pepper says:
November 26, 2011 at 12:36 pm
It’s easy to understand how Professor Jones would be reticent to respond to FOI requests. He’s a scientist, not a PR person. His work is available on line and and in Journals. Many of the requests are repetitive and unnecessary. The world needs Dr Jones and his colleagues doing what they do best ie conducting research in an effort to clarify the world’s emerging climate crisis.>>>

Gee. I’ve been reading Dr Jones e-mails and they sound like he spent an awful lot of time inventing the climate crisis and then covering up the fact that it was faked in the first place. You know, “hide the decline”, and having to keep the data “well hidden” and saying that they’d “oversold” their method of looking at frequency data and now “everyone believes it” even though they shouldn’t, things like that. You see, we really would like Dr Jones and his colleagues to be doing their jobs.

BUT THAT ISN’T WHAT THEY ARE DOING!

On another note, I’ve asked you several questions on several threads, and you’ve responded to none of them. That’s called “drive by trolling”. You pop in,make a remark, and f*** off. You don’t respond to the comments people make, or the questions they ask, and I think I know why.

If you did, you’d look even more like pre-recorded press release than you do already. You’ve got nothing, so you run away and hide. You aren’t even a drive by troll, you’re an apprentice drive by troll and all you seem to know how to do is read your lines. You can be replaced by a tape recorder you know….

More and more the warmistas are reminding me of those sad cases of a woman, so desiring a child, begins to stuff her clothing, growing larger for nine months only to produce a pillow filled with feathers. The alarms, having sounded now for some decades, heralding nothing more than 10+ years of CO2 increases, no significant temperature trend, a flat tropo, a cooling ocean, and pictures of Great Britain from space totally covered in snow and ice – a nation recently cautioned that snow would become unknown to the next generation.

Gents – it is time to pull the pillow out of your shorts and expose your inadequacy.

John,
You’ll be able to discuss some aspects of science re the WG
on this day. I’ll send some stuff (or get someone to send something)
nearer the time. I think we will be able to resolve the issues. I
can see where James is coming from. Colin here is doing some
different types of plots.

Keith just mentioned a call from you and the name David Holland.
I’ve helped someone at DEFRA several times respond to his letters.
Another Brit to watchout for is Douglas Keenan. This one accused
Wei-Chyung Wang (who is at SUNY) of research fraud – based on
two papers from 1990 (Wang et al, and Jones et al. in Nature). SUNY
have taken it very seriously, but they will find in Wei-Chyung’s favour.
All related to urban effects on the temperature record.

I’ve also had several FOI requests for the raw station temperature data
we use. I’ve given them a list of the sites. Told them to get in touch
with the NMSs.
All very unsettling at the time, but then that is probably what was intended.
I presume you’ve seen that awful Heartland Institute report from 3 weeks back.

Might be a clue as to why there are emails that Jones says he was going to delete. I believe Eudora is a POP3 client. You can chose to delete the mail on the server when it is deleted locally, or to simply delete the mail locally and leave it on the server. He might have thought he deleted it but maybe only deleted it in his own local computer’s mail store.

crosspatch says:
November 26, 2011 at 6:59 pm
All my emails according to Eudora
Might be a clue as to why there are emails that Jones says he was going to delete. I believe Eudora is a POP3 client. You can chose to delete the mail on the server when it is deleted locally, or to simply delete the mail locally and leave it on the server. He might have thought he deleted it but maybe only deleted it in his own local computer’s mail store>>>

There’s an additional dependency in terms of what the email server software itself is, and how that is set up. A lot of servers are set up to keep everything for a given period of time. If so, the user can set their rules to “delete from server” but that justs deletes it from the user’s ability to see it either on their client (Eudora) or on the server itself. But the email can still exist in the email system itself.

But you may have high lighted an additional issues which brings up some interesting points.

1. Phil says “all my emails according to Eudora”. He doesn’t say that is the ONLY email client he uses. Odd, is it not, that he said “according to Eudora” rather than simply “all my emails”? why the qualifier?

2. What kind of mickey mouse outfit is this? They’ve been served with an FOIA request. That’s a specific set of emails pertaining to specific information. That requires the email adminsitrators to search the SERVER for emails that fit the parameters of the FOIA request, SEQUESTER them, and PROVIDE them as a response. Under NO circumstance does compliance law allow for the end user themselves to perform this search! Unless compliance law is VERY different in Britain than it is in the US and Canada, they’ve broken compliance law simply by involving the end user AT ALL, let alone allowing him to pick and choose what fits the FOIA request and what doesn’t.

The latter is the more serious of the two. In the US, people have been sent to jail for this kind of obvious obstruction. That compliance officer Phil is discussing things with may very well have committed a criminal act. Any compliance lawyers watching this thread who have experience in British compliance regulations?

I asked on a climate blog site, Paul Hudson, for an answer to allegations in The Daily Mail that Roger Harrabin had received £15000 from the CRU to steer the BBC the ‘correct’ climate alarmist way. Any explanation or rebuttal would have probably closed the matter but this reveals the smell of rotting fish.

1) E-mail servers typically do NOT keep copies of e-mails passing through them on their way to another server. The logging that takes place is in the form of transactions; “Hello I am server MANNHANDLER.COM and here is my sender, recipient, and data” “OK MANNHANDLER.COM, I am JONESING.COM and I have accepted your data” (abbreviated). Never does actual message content get logged at every point. This only takes valuable computer resources.

2) But there are “tapping” mechanisms. Either this is explicit — as in a setting that allows the server to store all messages passing through the server, typically on secondary storage — or done through simple scripting, where a program operates on every message (such things are done for virus scanning etc) and that program/script can of course save the message, perhaps stripping any attachments for storage efficiency. This is done because of FOI issues, but also of internal accountability, fear of litigation based on “who said what, when” (I’ve seen this happen), IT delusions of grandeur, or any possible cause. This is now VERY common (it wasn’t — at all — when I started out).

3) Undeleting of e-mail isn’t that easy. To begin with, yes, deletion of a message only marks the file system pointer for the file as vacant, but that means that this area is free to overwrite. In a busy mail server, this can occur pretty soon. If the server uses the ancient mbox format and an expunge has occurred, undeleting single emails will be nigh impossible.

To me, these releases bear every sign of a “tap” where a directory used to store the complete mail flow sans attachments has been released in some way or another.

If the identity of the source of the Climategate 1 & 2 e-mails is ever revealed, I think he or she should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. That might re-instill some respect in the Nobel organization.

“It’s easy to understand how Professor Jones would be reticent to respond to FOI requests. He’s a scientist, not a PR person. His work is available on line and and in Journals. Many of the requests are repetitive and unnecessary. The world needs Dr Jones and his colleagues doing what they do best ie conducting research in an effort to clarify the world’s emerging climate crisis.”

Do you realize which two words makes this statement so hilarious and illogical?

Repetitive :: There never should have been a need for a second FOI request! Perhaps more than a hundred years ago (before computers, internet, copiers, telephones etc) at a time when each person might need a separate copy from the ‘Team’. But not a couple years ago when the *first* request, answered promptly and thoroughly, would have been the *last* request because of the posting of the data to a website like CA would have been enough. The ‘Team’ is solely responsible for repetitive requests! Willis or Steve McIntyre would have done all the work for them by mirroring the data everywhere. Jones could then have gotten right back to work wasting no more of his precious time on this thing. It was his choice to go down this road. To quote the Knight guarding the Holy Grail, ‘He chose Poorly’.

Unnecessary :: Have you even read the emails or the excerpts here and abroad both in 2009 and now? We’re the ones saying this was unnecessary. We have always said that. Do you think that Willis or Steve wanted to receive the data, or did they really want to be turned away and mocked? They wanted the data, just read their remarks then and now. They certainly did not want to get into a worldwide p!ssing contest with the megalomaniacs on the ‘Team’.

What’s ‘necessary’ is that you find a way back to reality. What’s ‘unnecessary’ is for you to make a fool out of yourself by parroting talking points: (“The world needs Dr Jones and his colleagues doing what they do best ie conducting research in an effort to clarify the world’s emerging climate crisis.”) presumably with a straight face. Unless of course the suspicions of Robert E. Phelan are correct that you are a skeptic performing PsyOps, in which case I would simply say: ‘My bad, well played sir!’

Leo [November 26, 2011 at 2:37 pm] says:

“Since most commenters here are from North America, it might be useful to be reminded that ‘ First Amendment Rights’ are something of which we Brits can only dream.”

Would it possible, with your consent of course, for us in the States to trade, say 3 to 5 of our liberal socialists for every one of you good folk? Understand that is only an opening lowball offer, we could possibly be convinced to increase our offer to 8 or even 10 liberal socialists.;-)

Looks like a win-win all around. The weather here is of your choosing, you could even find a place that mirrors Great Britain. We value people that think for themselves. On the other side, the European Union would welcome an influx of non-thinking fools that would support any and all of their feudalistic intentions. I understand that there is ‘free’ healthcare there also. Our liberals are begging for that. Let’s git’er done.

“It’s easy to understand how Professor Jones would be reticent to respond to FOI requests. He’s a scientist, not a PR person. His work is available on line and and in Journals. Many of the requests are repetitive and unnecessary. The world needs Dr Jones and his colleagues doing what they do best ie conducting research in an effort to clarify the world’s emerging climate crisis.”

How many times in recent years have we seen this infantile argument?

It boils down to, Jones is too busy, too special, and too important to deal with these requests, many of which are “unnecessary” or “repetitive”.

Once and for all, Hugh, please get this into your head. FOI obligations are legal obligations. Complinace is not optional. By all means make arguments based on the exceptions provided by the various FOI regimes, but compliance is NOT OPTIONAL depending on who you are or your perceived importance or value. Is, as you appear to suggest, FOI a PR exercise? What a ridiculous assertion. FOI regimes are some of the most enlightened and important legal frameworks introduced into civil society in decades implementing a specific aim of encouraging citizen participation in government. If they are a tad inconvenient for some public servants, then that is the price legislators were happy to impose in exchange for transparency and more open government. Anyone who objects to this must be mad, or Stalin, or something.

There is NO account taken of a requester’s motive, for obvious reasons. There is NO account taken of the fact that Jones might have been busy or unimpressed with the requests that he received. Any ICO or judge met with opposition based on such considerations will just raise an eyebrow, make a mental note that the person maling such an argument has no idea what he is talking about, and probably insist that his representative move on and stop wasting the tribunal’s/court’s time.

I am entirely unimpressed every year with my own obligation to prepare and file my tax returns – so what? Do you really think that Jones had to deal with FOI alone? He had a whole department of managers and lawyers standing with him. If he had to search for a bit of data or track down emails, so what? That is what the law says he has to do. The ony reason it caused such inconvenience with him, so far as I can see, is that his records were in disarray.

So he should just do it and people like you should stop this pathetic whining that he shouldn’t have to comply with his own leagal obligations because, “the world needs him” doing something else. Strewth, what an utterly pathetic statement. If you think it has any merit then take it to your MP/Senator or whatever and seek a change in the law, but don’t use it here as a defence of someone subject to a legal obligation that by its design deliberately has no time for such whining.

crosspatch says:
November 26, 2011 at 12:31 pm
Part of the problem is one of culture. The British have a very deep seated culture of official secrecy. While they did pass a FOIA, that they treat it the way that they do is pretty understandable given their bureaucratic culture.

And here we have an “underhanded trick!” but not sure if it was ever played. Tom Wigley to Mike Hulme discussing Michael Grubb in 5173.txt

Bob Harriss (ESIG Director) says he’ll be glad to support the CRU et al. bid — he may have already written to you. Eileen Claussen (Pew) told me that Michael Grubb had also contacted her. She thinks he is a jerk; but because of the formal contact from both groups, she thought it best to support neither. Too bad.

By the way, if you want to play an underhanded trick, you could try to get some *real* economists to express their opinions on Michael. I know that Rich Richels and Jae Edmonds have a very low opinion of him (as do I). He has no formal background in economics, even though he claims to do credible economic analyses. Basically, he is a “greenie”; and he bends his “science” to suit his ideological agenda. I don’t know how you can alert the people who are judging the two bids to this: but it may be helpful to know the facts.

So I would take this to mean Wigley doesn’t see himself as a “greenie” bit sees Grubb as one. Good to know.

6. Foundation for Science and Technology Climate Change Evening Last week the Tyndall Centre co-sponsored a climate change meeting at the Royal Society, hosted by the Foundation for Science and Technology and attracting more than 200 people. The event concentrated on national, regional and international policy issues associated with climate change, rather than on the underlying science. The main speakers were Environment Minister Michael Meacher, Imperial College Professor Michael Grubb and Nick Otter from ALSTOM Power (and member of the Tyndall Centre Advisory Board). The Tyndall Centre was represented by a display at the venue, as well as Mike Hulme, Brian Launder, John Shepherd, Trevor Davies, Franz Berkhout, Peter Liss and Gillian Watson.

7. Tyndall media appearances
Mike Hulme starred in the media over the last fortnight, commenting on the Tyndall Centre’s first round of projects, the IPCC report, and El Nino, as well as doing book reviews. Jean Palutikof spoke about East Anglia and rising sea levels, while Simon Shackley talked to a Belgian journalist about
his research project on carbon sequestration. If a Flemish article doesn’t sound exotic enough for you, the country-by-country analysis done by Mike Hulme and Tim Mitchell appeared in Uzbekistan’s Almaty Herald.

Tyndall is where the profit is made from the research. CRU produces data that is fed to IPCC then from there to UNFCCC. From UNFCCC policy suggestions are fed to DEFRA (and other government agencies around the world) and then UEA’s Tyndall Centre is standing there ready to profit by helping DEFRA implement the policy recommendations generated by CRU’s research. Absolutely brilliant.

I don’t think an institution should be involved in both policy and research, particularly when it stands to profit from implementing policy as a result of its research. It could create the temptation to skew the research to generate policies to increase the cash flow of the institution.

Reading through 5089.txt (Briffa to Edward Cook on Esper) I find this pretty important:

My beef with Esper is not because his conclusion is wrong – merely that his piece wrongly impugns the IPCC. Through a subtle combination of selective focus, blatant misrepresentation of the text, and a complete failure to acknowledge the circumspect language and explicit caveats therein, he builds a straw man and succeeds in publishing a trivial, unoriginal idea.

This is *extremely* important in my opinion because it basically says that the IPCC report is written in a “code” of sorts. In other words, the language is circumspect with caveats “therein” in a way that a scientist might recognize but a lay person or politician might not. Also, many of these are buried deep in the report and a policy maker may never actually dig that deeply into it. So they get buyoff from a wide array of scientists by using “circumspect” language that doesn’t sound “circumspect” at all to a lay person reading the report almost as if it is written in two different language at the same time. An academic would read it one way, and the average citizen would read it in quite a different way. Apparently Esper didn’t get the “walk through” of the document to explain these code words, where they were, why they were there, and what they were really saying.

crosspatch;
This is *extremely* important in my opinion because it basically says that the IPCC report is written in a “code” of sorts. In other words, the language is circumspect with caveats “therein” in a way that a scientist might recognize but a lay person or politician might not.>>>

Well said! When I first began wading through the IPCC reports themselves, long before I discovered WUWT and CA and other skeptic sites, that was my EXACT reaction to AR4. I’ve spent 30 years in the technology industry and I have to wade through reams of technical documents setting out how various products work and what the benefits of them are. I coined a phrase a long time ago that “the performance of the product rarely meets the peformance of the brochure”.

I know a document written for the express purpose of misleading an uninformed reader while not actually saying anything specific that is incorrect when I see it, and IPCC AR4 simply screams “guitly” in regard to your accusation. IPCC AR4 has “marketing spin” written all over it. It is chalk full of “caveats” and “circumspect” comments and “fuzzy” definitions of certainty, not to mention obscure references that when checked simply refer to other obscure references that turn out to refer to still other obscure references in an endless trail that culminates behind a paywall or a paper that can’t be found at all.

Why all the cloak and dagger stuff ? I dont know.
I have tried relating all this to my own field, where reputations and big rewards are at stake, and it just doesn’t jell at all. Noone treats the law with such ill-regard, and everyone can plot a trend.
The only thing that makes sense to me, is that the whole edifice is shonky, and the thing is only kept afloat by a mutual support system of backslapping.

What strikes me most, in this whole affair, is that not only can Willis not replicate Jones’s work, but Jones can’t either

“Phil Jones says “I’ll also delete this email after I’ve sent it.”
Surely, Jones could not have forgotten to press the delete button once the email had been sent. I understand that he has problems with Excel but surely he knows how to use email and the delete button on the keyboard!
Did Jones delete the email?
If so, why is it amongst the emails that have been released?
What does this say about the source of these emails, by which I mean the server on which they were stored?”

Emails are only deleted from the local machine – not the Email server. Deleting Emails from the server is quite a lengthy process and due to statute of limitations laws, which vary from country to country should not be deleted until that period has passed. My guess is that noone even bothered deleting old Emails from the UEA mail servers. MAybe they couldn’t afford a decent IT guy since they pay big bucks to employ incompetant climate scientists.